"On Sunday night, a gunman killed more than 50 people at a country music festival outside the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. On Monday morning, authorities identified the gunman as Stephen Paddock. But in an episode that has become sadly familiar in the immediate aftermath of such tragedies, amateur sleuths on 4chan incorrectly identified the shooter as another man — and this time Google helped signal boost their misinformation.

As BuzzFeed's Ryan Broderick first pointed out on Twitter, when you entered a Google search for 'Geary Danley' this morning, the site displayed links to 4chan's pol (politically incorrect) message board in its Top Stories section wrongly identifying him as the shooter. Mashable was able to replicate the result, but the links no longer appear in the module. We have reached out to Google for comment.

For far-right pages like pol, incorrectly identifying Danley as the shooter was politically convenient. As a (since-deleted) Gateway Pundit article stated, Danley is 'Reportedly a Democrat Who Liked Rachel Maddow, MoveOn.org and Associated with Anti-Trump Army' based on information gleaned from his Facebook page.

One might assume that the carousel of stories at the top of your Google search would be the most relevant and credible links based on their query, but to make that very reasonable assumption would be a mistake. The criteria for what gets a spot in the highly-coveted space remains vague. The links certainly don't have to be factually accurate, given that a climate change denial story has appeared in the module. And it's also evident that the system can be gamed. In February, a LinkedIn blogger wrote over 150 articles about how to stream the Super Bowl consisting of nonsensical strings of keywords aimed at fooling Google's search algorithm. It worked.

Today, Google helped further the agenda of the far-right by promoting their threads misidentifying the gunman. If the search giant comments at all, it will likely blame the mishap on an improperly audited algorithm. But as people turn to Google's search bar for information on the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history, the tech behemoth has a responsibility to ensure its users aren't being led astray by a bunch of neo-Nazis."

"Ever since federal regulations made it pretty much illegal for most Americans to own a fully-automatic firearm (even those that can own such firearms are limited to guns made before the 1980s), people have designed all kinds of devices to mimic full-auto fire at the range without breaking the law.

One company, SlideFire, took the concept of bump-firing, by which a shooter simulates full auto fire by allowing the recoil of a semi-auto firearm held loosely by the shooter to repeatedly activate the trigger against the trigger finger, and created a stock that makes for a fun range gun, but has little practical use.

Others have tweaked how a semi-auto trigger works, like the DoubleTap trigger system, which fires a round every time the trigger is depressed and released, essentially doubling the number of rounds per trigger pull."

Few things:
You can't really say that a website like 4chan are "alt right". The alt right movement is a white identitarian movement started by Richard Spensor it's main goal is basically the opposite of multiculturalism. The media have coined the term alt right to basically mean anyone on the Internet that has a different political opinion to mainstream politics even Jewish conservatives like Ben Shapiro get labeled "alt right". 4chan is completely different it's normally a bunch of trolls on the Internet mostly socially awkward kids.

You can turn most semi Autos into full Autos even stuff like the Ruger 10/22. What sort of gun control laws would you like to see put into place to stop something like this happening again?

kingdragonfly: Does it matter how he made an automatic weapon? I'm not going into specifics, but trust me it's easy to get the pieces, and takes very little skill to do.

Yes it does matter - it's kind of a core issue to "the debate" over this case:

The pro-gun lobby argues that as it's illegal (in most cases/places) to buy a fully automatic weapon, or to modify a semi-automatic weapon to turn it into a fully automatic weapon, then as the perpetrator was clearly breaking the law anyway - then stricter laws on the the types of guns allowed for sale couldn't have prevented it.There's also an argument that as it appears that the perpetrator was an apparently "normal" retired accountant, then stricter rules on who's allowed to buy guns wouldn't have prevented it.

They're valid and (at least) partly true arguments (from what's known by the public in this case anyway) despite that being a bitter pill to swallow for the "anti-gun" lobby.

Stan: Few things: You can't really say that a website like 4chan are "alt right". The alt right movement is a white identitarian movement started by Richard Spensor it's main goal is basically the opposite of multiculturalism. The media have coined the term alt right to basically mean anyone on the Internet that has a different political opinion to mainstream politics even Jewish conservatives like Ben Shapiro get labeled "alt right". 4chan is completely different it's normally a bunch of trolls on the Internet mostly socially awkward kids.

You can turn most semi Autos into full Autos even stuff like the Ruger 10/22. What sort of gun control laws would you like to see put into place to stop something like this happening again?

Stan: I still don't think you understand the meaning of alt right. It's a white identitarian movement it doesn't really have anything to do with socially awkward kids on 4chan

I do understand it, and also that as one defining aspect of "identitarian" ideology is that one race or culture is superior to another, then the alt-right are in the same bucket of putrid swill as the gormless idiots on 4Chan/pol/.

Being "socially awkward" doesn't excuse true evil. I dispute that they're all even "socially awkward" in the first place - they seem to have quite a team spirit, swimming together in a pool of filth.

This is getting off topic - perhaps start a thread on alt-right if you want to continue.

There is a lot I want to say about this mass shooting, but I have opted to rather limit myself to just a single post in this thread. I want to scream at the American people and system right now but thats not going to achieve very much. To put it short, my heart is shattered and broken for LV. To all the Dads, moms, brothers, sisters, daughters, husbands/wives who have lost someone precious to you, peace be with you, you in my thoughts. You all deserve so much better than this. Love you LV.

In my opinion, it is tasteless and insensitive to politicise this tragedy. Especially while the bodies are still warm.

This was horrifying, brutal and devastating for so many people from all walks of life. To be using it as another opportunity to make a snide dig at Trump (as if anyone is short of more appropriate opportunities to do that!) or to push an agenda of any sort... Well, lets just say it makes me very sad.

The thing is though that any action taken in response to this will be through political means. I see one of the first things Whitehouse spokesperson Sarah Huckabee-Sanders said was that now was not the time to talk about gun policy. However as Trevor Noah said if a plane crashes we talk about aviation safety, if a bridge collapses we talk about infrastructure maintenance. For some reason talking about guns after yet another incident like this is unacceptable. The simple fact is people are saying now is not the time because they want to avoid having that conversation at all.

I will do that at some point fred99 as I believe the term alt right gets tossed around far to liberally these days.

Back on topic I honestly don't believe that any form of gun control would have made a difference here. If someone is mad enough to do what this person did they would still find a way to kill massive amounts of people, I think that can be seen in Europe right now.